Mardy Fish, after recovering from what was finally diagnosed as thyroiditis, made it into the top eight this year, earning himself his first trip to the elite A.T.P. World Tour Finals.
Mardy Fish had dropped all that weight and kept it off. He had shored up his forehand and his endurance, finally committed himself to consistency and no-regrets exploration of the full range of his tennis talent.
The latest news and analysis from all of the 2011 major tournaments.
Straight Sets RSS Feed | AtomYet in the early stages of this season, with his body refusing to cooperate with the master plan, Fish began to despair. At age 29, which is advanced for a 21st-century tennis professional, Fish knew the moment to make a major move was now, but despite all the training and ambition, he was mysteriously low on energy.
“It was tough, we couldn’t understand it,” said Fish’s coach, David Nainkin. “I remember in March, he said: ‘I’m never going to be in the top 10. My time is running out.”’
Nainkin can tell such Fish stories now with the ease of a coach who is on the other side of the abyss. Fish, after recovering from what was finally diagnosed as thyroiditis, actually did better than the top 10. He made it into the top eight, which has earned him his first trip to the elite A.T.P. World Tour Finals.
The odds remain heavily against Fish winning a Grand Slam singles title in this top-heavy men’s tennis era. His close friend Andy Roddick is sure to remain, in the big picture, the leader of their generation of American men.
But Fish will always have this: an unexpected place in the lineup with the game’s heavyweights after never finishing higher than 16th in the year-end rankings in his first 11 seasons on tour.
“Andy kept telling me just to relax and not look at the standings and just play,” Fish said of Roddick. “He kept telling me, ‘You’re fine, you’re fine.’ And I said: ‘Dude. You played it eight times, shut up, you can easily say that.”’
Fish secured the 8th and final spot in Paris during the last regular tour event of the year, but Roddick won’t be with him. Roddick dropped out of the top 10 this season and will miss the year-end championships for the first time since 2002.
Out of respect and amity for Roddick, Fish has been tempering his public delight at becoming the top-ranked American for months.
“I got better at it as the summer went on,” Fish said. “It’s an uncomfortable position when you bring up Andy and you bring up James Blake. These are guys that have been ahead of me my entire career and then just a month into it, I’m supposed to say I’m better than them now. That wasn’t it. Andy is the alpha male of our generation.”
“I didn’t want to jump out there and act like I was the best player when I wasn’t,” he added, “and I would rather err on the side that I was erring on than go the other way.”
But this is clearly a meaningful moment for Fish, the son of a tennis coach, whom Mardy calls a “big tennis geek” for his interest in all levels of the game. His son has the gene, too, it seems.
“He will watch and follow every result around the world,” Nainkin said. “He’ll watch tapes of other matches, he’ll watch tapes of himself, of his opponents. He’ll even watch tapes of the guy he’s going to practice with in the morning. I’d say that is pretty unique.”
Fish has long had one of the sweetest two-handed backhands and purest service motions on tour, but he has broadened his range, both in terms of court coverage and tactics, since changing his diet and dropping 30 pounds, or 13 kilograms, before the 2010 season.
“He was soft,Vibram Shoes, he was soft around the belly, but more than that,Coach Outlet, he was just soft in the way he went about things,” said Patrick McEnroe, the former U.S. Davis Cup captain who is now general manager of player development at the U.S.T.A. and one of Fish’s biggest supporters.
“He was like one of those N.B.A. players who get a big contract — a lot bigger than tennis players,Vibram Fiver Finger Shoes, by the way — and that just get soft and just kind of go through the motions and rely on their talent,” he added.
“ So one night, they’ll have a 26-point night and the next night they’ll be tired and score four. That was sort of Mardy. He had the ability to step up and play with the great players, but he couldn’t sustain it because he hadn’t really put the work in physically and mentally.”
Fish doesn’t disagree: “I was too satisfied at times with my results, and I’d basically go away for months at a time.”
He has yet to get past the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam event, reaching the final eight at the 2008 U.S. Open and at Wimbledon this year. But he has been a much steadier force in the last two seasons, and though he is carrying a hamstring injury into the World Tour Finals and is in the same round-robin group with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and the in-form Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, those close to him say his 30th birthday next month won’t mark the end of his surge.
“To me he’s a young 29,” Nainkin said.
His marriage in 2008 has been a factor in his late-career surge. So is the structure that he has found at the U.S.T.A. National Training Center in California the last three years.
In Paris,Beats By Dre, he continually used the pronoun “we” to describe his success in 2011, and it will be a collective effort in London, too. Fish plans to bring in his parents, his wife and her parents, and Rodney Marshall, the strength coach who helped him recover from knee surgery in 2008.
Of his spot in London,Nike Air Max Shoes, he said: “You can’t take it for granted, and I’ll certainly hope to get back next year. But I’ll take this one like it will be my only one.”
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